She’d scarcely ever given the child a thought, for Frances had done what their own mother had done and had a large gap in the family and the nearest in age to Josie was Sam, who at twenty was eleven years her senior. Hannah knew from the letters her sister had written that Sam had been living in the mountains, working their grandparents’ farm since he’d left school at fourteen. If Josie was to go there, she’d become a maid of all work, her childhood would be over and Hannah well knew that.
But for God’s sake, there was a fine family of them. Surely to God one of them could look after their own sister?
But in her heart she knew she was the only one left. Peter had become a priest and was living away in the Scottish Highlands somewhere and poor Miriam was married to a man she had met on a brief visit to England. She returned with him to his home in Connemara where, according to Frances, they tried to scratch a living from the stones. At twenty-eight, she’d been married eight years and had eight children.
Miriam had not come home for her father’s illness or funeral either and gave the excuse she was almost on her time, but Frances had suspected she couldn’t afford to come. Even if she’d have offered a home to Josie, Hannah knew Frances wouldn’t have been happy sending her there.
But then what about Martin who was twenty-seven, the same age as herself, and Siobhan two years younger? Martin had coped with the farm single-handed since his father had died, but Hannah, who’d been brought up alongside him and understood him better than the others, knew he was no farmer. He’d always wanted to go to New York; he used to talk about it all the time. And now he and Siobhan had the chance. Their Aunt Norah had offered to send them the fare.
Martin had been unable to contain his excitement when he’d met Hannah off the train. ‘It’s like a dream,’ he’d said, as he’d set the old pony pulling the cart to canter over the cobblestones. ‘I thought I was stuck on the farm for years, you know, I mean with Da gone? I’d never have left Mammy and God knows I wished no harm to her but … well, the old place won’t be the same without her.’
There was no place in bustling New York and their aunt’s plush apartment for a child either. It hadn’t been said openly, but it was understood.
That left Margaret and Ellen, only Margaret was now known as Sister Ambrose, one of the ‘Sisters of the Poor’. If the war hadn’t raged on for six horrifying years, she would already be in Africa teaching the heathens about the love of Jesus. Now that it was over, she was just awaiting a ship’s return to civilian duties.
Ellen was twenty-one and getting married. But even as Hannah thought of her, she immediately rejected the idea. She was marrying a farmer and would have to live with his parents and two sisters and a brother in a small farmhouse with only two bedrooms. A young sister in tow, too, would make the place even more cramped.
She wondered suddenly where she might have ended up if it hadn’t been for Frances. She might have been pushed from pillar to post, one relative to another. Or left with her morose, sullen father who blamed her for her mother’s death. There was the rub though. Frances had been there, solid, welcoming and loving, and now her dying wish was for Hannah to care for her youngest child.
The trouble was Hannah was marrying Mr Bradley in late summer and she didn’t know how he’d take to her looking after Josie. They’d never talked about children, and she didn’t know how he’d feel being landed with a nine-year-old girl.
Well, he’d have to put up with it, she decided suddenly, for she owed her sister and this was pay out time. ‘Is it such a hard thing to ask?’ Frances asked, and Hannah realised the silence had stretched out between them uncomfortably, while the thoughts had tumbled about her head. ‘No,’ she said untruthfully. ‘No, not at all. I was just wondering how I’d manage being at work all day. And she doesn’t know me at all. How does she feel about it?’
‘She doesn’t know. How could I tell her? I didn’t know if you’d agree.’
‘When does she think … I mean, does she know?’
‘That I’m dying?’ Frances said. ‘Oh aye, she knows. At least I think she does. She’s not a stupid girl. She’s seen the doctor come and go and the priest and I haven’t left my bed now for over a week. I haven’t actually told her, but I think she knows.’
Frances was right, Josie did know her mother was dying. She’d listened at doors, a common practice when she wanted to know about anything she knew none of her family would tell her, and heard it said plainly. She wasn’t totally surprised at the gravity of her mother’s illness for she’d watched her become weaker and weaker and her skin and eyes take on a yellowish tinge, and she shed many tears that she’d kept hidden from her family.
But still she’d hoped and prayed. God, she’d spent so long on her knees and lit so many candles and said a special novena for the sick, she’d thought it just had to work. Father Mulligan said God answered prayers and if your faith was as small as a mustard seed you could move mountains. But Josie’s mother got more and more frail with each passing day and Josie lost faith in the priest’s words. She thought it a stupid thing to want to move mountains from place to place anyway, and surely to cure someone like her Mammy, who was so loved and needed, had to be easier than that.
But as her Mammy got worse instead of better, Josie had begun to feel lonely and afraid. She’d got used to her mother not being around by the time Hannah arrived, for she hadn’t been well this long time and Siobhan and Ellen had seen to things. She knew it wouldn’t last. Ellen was set to marry and Siobhan … she knew what was planned for her and Martin. Not a word had been said to her, it was amazing what people talked about when they didn’t know you were there, and she shivered in fear, for she hadn’t a clue who was going to look after her.
Josie found out who would the day after Hannah arrived, and then she stared at her mother in horror. She wanted to stamp her feet and shout and scream, but she couldn’t do that in front of a woman as sick as her Mammy. But surely she could see Josie couldn’t live with Hannah, someone she didn’t know in a strange country? God, it was hard enough losing her mother, she’d barely come to terms with that, without leaving behind all that was familiar. ‘Mammy,’ she said in a voice thick with unshed tears. ‘Mammy, I don’t want to go to England and I don’t want to live with Aunt Hannah – I don’t know her.’
‘You will, child. By the time it is all over, you’ll know her.’
‘Don’t, Mammy.’
‘Cutie dear,’ Frances said gently, ‘sit up here beside me,’ and she patted the bed.
Josie sat, but gingerly, knowing how even a sudden movement could hurt her mother for she was so thin that the bones in her body were visible. And now one of those stick-thin arms trailed around Josie’s neck as Frances held her daughter close. ‘Oh, Mammy! Why have you to die?’
Frances was a little while answering. She battled with tears behind her own eyes at the unfairness of life. How she hated leaving this youngest child an orphan at such a young age. She’d have liked to have had a few more years till she was older, maybe married, certainly better able to cope. But it wasn’t to be. She knew it, everyone knew it, and it would be no kindness to allow Josie to harbour any sort of false hope. ‘I don’t know why I have to die, Josie. Aren’t we all in God’s hands?’
‘If you ask me, he’s not doing a very good job of it,’ Josie said fiercely and Frances didn’t chide her for she’d had many of the same thoughts.
‘If I have to go anyway, can’t I go with our Ellen?’
‘You know there will be no room for you there, child.’
‘Granny’s then?’
But even as Josie spoke, she gave a shudder of distaste. She hated her grandparents’ farm high in the Wicklow hills. There was nothing cosy about the bleak, thatched cottage they lived in and no comfort to be had either